Here's a twist - a movie
review from a guest reviewer! Hey, I do guest toy reviews, so why not
movie reviews? Sean Teeter, or own college bum, is here with a review
of the House of 1000 Corpses. He's also got a toy
review up of the figures at the same time!

Mr. Crawford was kind enough to allow me to run a review of House of 1000 Corpses at the same time I did the review for the figures from the movie, so I’ll try to stick with the previous format on his other movie picks.

The
plot in a nutshell
Have you seen a little film called the Texas Chainsaw Massacre? Well not only is House of 1000 Corpses somewhat of an homage to Tobe Hooper’s masterpiece, but it also lifts a great deal of the bare-bones plot from the same film. Not that the aspects of this set-up haven’t been used several times over . . .

During the ‘70’s, a group of four college kids are traveling the country in their car when they stop at a roadside attraction run by Captain Spaulding. In addition to selling gas and buckets of chicken, Spaulding also runs a little carnival ride featuring America’s most notorious serial killers, including the legendary Dr. Satan –who just happens to have been a local. The kids set off looking for the tree that the good doctor swung from, but end up snagging a beautiful, if slightly weird hitchhiker. After car trouble ensues, the group retreats to the hitchhiker’s house out in the middle of nowhere. Here they meet numerous torments at the hands of the Firefly family, in The House of 1000 Corpses. Can the local sheriff save them in time? Will they learn the truth about Dr. Satan? Can Rob Zombie really pull a sequel off this year?

Relatively
Spoiler Free ThoughtsRob Zombie is certainly a fan of horror and dark humor, but he seems a little misguided in presenting either in this film. Looking at the designs present in Rob’s stage shows, videos, and artwork, one would assume that he’d bring the same touch to his directorial debut. Unfortunately that touch seems reserved for the end of the film, while the rest is lifted from previous horror flicks, with a few new touches thrown in the mix every once in a while.

Rob stated in several interviews that he wanted this to film to go back to the earlier days of the modern horror genre. Well this movie does it in several ways. First off, everyone seems to be fair game –none of this smoke pot, or have sex and die crap found in your Freddy and Jason flicks. Also, the deaths are very brutal and for the most part low-tech. No Rube Goldberg-Final Destination or Freddy vs. Jason computer enhancements here. There’s lots of red and a very raw feel to it. In many ways that’s a good thing, but towards the end it proves to be exhausting. You just get cruel brutality after brutality racking up, and it ceases to be remotely shocking, horrifying, or scary. You just start asking yourself, “What’s the point?” and “Is this thing almost over?” And that’s not good for a film with a measly 88-minute clock time. You also get a little touch of MTV editing. Using grainy hand-held footage, Zombie splices in images of some of his killer characters to give the audience a little background. The visual style works pretty well, and saves on storytelling time. However, Rob doesn’t do much with the time saved. He also used other various editing tricks such as split screens and various montages to different degrees of effectiveness.

Zombie makes the big mistake of not giving the audience anyone to root for. Out of the four college kids the two women are a pair of one-dimensional bitches, one guy is an annoying Jack Black-wannabe, and the other guy’s just along for the ride. Well, so what? Rob himself wants you to route for the psychotic Firefly family. Unfortunately, there’s nobody there worth cheering for as well. Baby may be pretty but her attempts to be scary are laughable, her shrill laugh is annoying, and her attempts at getting into character are awkward. Tiny’s just there to look weird, as is Rufus. Grandpa is supposed to be the comic relief of the household, but only gets one good line in the whole movie. Mama is there for moments of awkward sexuality and her cleavage. And Otis . . . well, Otis is there to do all the vile stuff that nobody else will do. It doesn’t help that Otis isn’t very frightening. While his various brutalities are waaayy over done, his reactions of enjoyment towards them are ridiculous.

There is very little overt humor to lighten the situation. The beginning shows some promise in the heavy overacting of Captain Spaulding, but we quickly fall down a gopher hole afterwards. There’re only two more overt jokes worth laughing at in the film. Any other attempts at humor are done with in-jokes, some of which aren’t that funny and appear more in homage. The Firefly family, and the names Otis, Rufus, and Captain Spaulding are all in reference to characters played by Groucho Marx in past movies. One of the lines in the opening sequence (that has nothing to do with the rest of the movie whatsoever) is a direct reference to the White Zombie song “Grease Paint and Monkey Brains”. The chicken Spaulding serves up is a joke on the BBQ from Chainsaw Massacre. The list goes on, but none of these really add much to the final product.

Rob may have been able to work on this story a little more, but he crams way too much into too small a timeframe. The entire ending deviates from the rest of the movie. While it has some genuinely creepy imagery and real Zombie designs, it has almost nothing to do with the rest of the picture, and seems to be a half-assed copout. Well I guess he had to return to the now-forgotten Dr. Satan plot . . . (see spoilers)

In the end, you can tell that this was a labor of love on Rob Zombie’s part. It is a really well made movie, and there are some very good moments, but I feel tired after watching it every time –and not in a good way. The same repeated brutality that’s supposed to shock and scare just gets old and weary. This is definitely a change of pace from other horror flicks out there these days, but it’s not for everyone.

Rating - Rent It but...
Fans of Zombie and more primal horror films are going to want to check this out. If your idea of the perfect horror flick is The Sixth Sense, The Others, or The Ring, you’re going to want to skip this. This is very dark all around, and feels like a white-trash nightmare. It’s probably best viewed with a group of friends and a few six packs . . . of Jack Daniels.

Spoiler Laden ThoughtsAnd there’s a lot of them . . .

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Zombie has no idea where he wants to go with this picture, and that’s pretty apparent from the beginning. Spaulding blows away two potential robbers in his store before the credits, gives the kids their gas and serial killer tour after the credits, then pretty much disappears until the end for a predictable cameo.

The first member of the Firefly clan we meet is Baby. We get tired of the whole family before even meeting the rest solely based on this character. Sherri Moon is a very pretty woman, and actually has a decent singing voice, but she really needs to work on her acting abilities. While she seems to have all the technical aspects down pretty well, she just seems to channel the wrong voice and emotions. In simpler terms she’s annoying –especially with the shrill little girl laugh that pops out of her mouth every five seconds. Maybe being Mrs. Zombie had something to do with her casting in this picture . . .

The other family members don’t do much of anything. Tiny’s there to look weird, as the giant, mute, man-child with the burned face, but is about as threatening as a puppy dog. He even lets one of the girls go when she asks him, but Otis is right around the corner. Rufus is just there to round out sheer numbers. Grandpa’s feeble humor is so bad I didn’t even groan at his “jokes”. Oscar nominee Karen Black shows how far she’s sunk in Hollywood, by playing the white trash Mother Firefly alongside Baby. And then there’s Otis.

Otis is just plain vile to the point where you want him off-screen. He certainly offends the audience, but not by being scary. He’s just so downright moronic and repulsive, that the only thing one can root for in this film is his death, which never happens since the Fireflys are supposed to be the “heroes”.
So with the false lead from Spaulding sending our four kids off to meet Dr. Satan, to the twisted Firefly clan, we’re sent down a third path. The ending is completely out of line with any other part of the picture. The two surviving college kids are dropped down a deep hole dressed in Easter Bunny outfits, inside a coffin. At the bottom a horde of ghouls pop out of the ground, break through the coffin, and carry our remaining male student off –leaving the girl to wander through the tunnels filled with all kinds of creepy-crawlies. Wait a minute. Ghouls? Yup, we’re now in a supernatural horror flick! Zombies and hybrid monsters galore abound in the underground baby! So what if it doesn’t make any sense! After some close calls, the remaining girl finds what’s left of the missing guy underneath Dr. Satan’s multiple scalpels. The doctor is perhaps the best-designed horror in the movie, and it really sucks that he and his brood weren’t in the main story line. The extra mechanical arms coming out of his shoulders and bio-ghoul look were pretty cool, but had nothing in common with the preceding film. Rob should have simple picked one story and stuck with it. The underground stuff was the most effective and had the biggest visual impact on the film while the rest of it seemed to be a waste of time. There’re pieces of a good, effective horror movie at the end here. Too bad Zombie didn’t focus more on them.

Of course when our last student escapes, she hops into a car driven by Captain Spaulding. Yay. Of course Otis pops up out of the back, and we fade out. Surprise.

Death-wise, there’s nothing really fancy. Spaulding caps two would-be robbers in the intro with a little mess. Some cheerleaders get knocked off to help drag the sheriff into the story. Jerry, the only remotely likeable college, is the first to go. You don’t see his death, but Otis proudly shows off what’s left of his corpse as his new creation “Fishboy”, a twisted homage to Barnum’s Fiji Mermaid. This is perhaps the only creative death in the whole movie, and it stands out from the rest. Two cops and one of the girls’ fathers show up for quick deaths. Otis wears the father’s face and chest like a costume later on for the daughter to look at. It just seems like overkill (no pun intended). We’ve gotten the point several times over by now on how twisted these people are. I think “Fishboy” accomplished that. After dressing the three students up in Bunny Suits to sacrifice them to Dr. Satan, one girl escapes and is chased down by Baby and stabbed to death rather brutally. This really seems implausible, since even tied up the college girl looks bigger and stronger than Baby. The last college boy gets his from Dr. Satan himself after being tortured and partial scalped by Baby earlier.

The whole movie’s just too inconsistent and incoherent for repeated viewing.